John Embler Wendy Braun English 255 14 April 2014

Infographic Design Defense Essay

The topic of my infographic is gun control and the dire need to reform it for the betterment of our society. Currently, our gun laws do not place nearly enough emphasis on the possible threats in our nation. Our current laws lack proper ammunition restrictions and our gun laws are currently way too lenient. Through my infograph I attempted to show my readers the dangers behind our current gun laws and show them that it is up to us, as the public, to really make changes. In this essay, I will explain all aspects of my infographic as well as defend my strategy through reasoning based off ethos, pathos and logos. The layout of a literal work is the fundamental foundation that ultimately sets the tone. I attempted to layout my infographic in a spatial way that would draw my readers into the information that I wanted them to review closely. All of the information in my infographic is aligned either left to right or top to bottom. When I compared two things to each other I attempted to place them side by side, and sum up the information either right in the middle or centered just below the information. I based my left to right placement off of the spatial recommendations in the article Visual Rhetoric: Analyzing Visual Documents that stated: Left to right and top to down is still the normal reading and scanning pattern for Englishspeaking countries, (Pepper, Brizee, Angeli, 2014) and I based my strategy of summing up

differing information based off of the statement: The eye will naturally look for centers. (Pepper, Brizee, Angeli, 2014) I feel as if these two strategies will make my infographic easier to follow and understand. I started my infographic with a section on the Sandy Hook shootings in a pathos attempt to bring out the sad emotions that this massacre brings up. I then successfully portrayed logos through all of the statistics and graphs that I included, and I proved my credibility with ethos in the opening paragraph by explaining that I am a gun rights advocate that realizes the need for change. Visuals can be a very helpful tool for pulling readers into your message. Through choosing the particular visuals that I did I attempted to show my audience how staggering the statistics can be and how bad change is needed. I attempted to capture the emotions of my readers through the pathos appeal in the first section about the Newtown shootings. I accomplished this through showing each little boy, girl, and adult as individuals so that people will look at them as single victims and not one large group. Next, I used individual statistics like the picture portraying that The United States was responsible almost 9,500 gun murders in a year compared to our closest runner up, Canada, with 200. I made this point to show my readers that there is truly no logical explanation to this other than the fact that are laws are clearly too lenient and need to be reformed. Finally, I attempted to prove my own credibility on the subject by showing my knowledge of current ammunition laws and showing that I am a credible author due to my descriptive pictures that clearly show my stance on the matter. A creative yet conservative color scheme can be a good way to catch a readers eye, but if there are too many different colors it can become confusing and push readers away. I chose the red, white, and blue color scheme in attempt to grasp the emotions of my audience through a patriotic theme. I assumed that because this being an issue of home land security my audience

would be drawn in by the patriotic colors and be more likely to buy into my argument. In my opinion, my use of red to highlight my numbers and important information proves my credibility. According to the Color Theory Powerpoint, the color Red is largely associated with danger, aggression, stimulation, and excitement, (Color Theory, 2014) this solidifies the fact that I purposely did that in order to hook my audience through the highlighted numbers as well as add emphasis to important bits of information. My intentions were to lure my readers in with the red numbers and then discuss the information in white. I found this to be a logical decision based off of the article The Psychology of Color that stated white can initiate internal meanings like innocent, silent, and clarity. (The Psychology of Color, 2014) Personally, I believe that all three of these verbs prove use of logos through my color scheme because I drew my audience in with the red numbers and then logically explained my highlighted numbers with stories of innocent and ultimately silenced victims. At other times in my infograph I attempted to logically clarify my stance by explaining the information I had previously presented. If a literary work doesnt have solid and meaningful text and or font, then it can be deemed essentially worthless. With this being said, the text and font in an infographic can either make it or break it. The font I decided to use is known as Britannic Bold. My logic behind this font was the fact that it is easy to read and a little more bold than most fonts and will hopefully be good for catching peoples eyes. I stuck with the same font throughout the whole infographic in attempt to not confuse my readers as well as try to prove to them that everything in my infographic is consistent like I am on this subject. For the most part, all of the text in my infographic is geared towards my readers emotions. I attempted to show them negative outcomes that have arisen from the lack of gun laws in order to persuade my audience that reformation is a must.

Inforgraphics are a great tool for getting your point out about a certain topic. As long as an infographic shows solid information and does not confuse or cause the audience to doubt your credibility they can be very effective for persuasion. I feel that the choices I made in setting up my infographic will make my story appealing to all people concerned with their familys safety due to the fact that if nothing is done, the next victim could be a member of their own family. I believe that the way I set my infograph up is perfect for persuasion because I started with a sad story, showed statistics, and then place some doubt on the governments actions in attempt to call the public to action.

Works Cited
Introduction to Color Theory. Purdue U, 2014. Power Point. 11 April, 2014. Carey Jolliffe. The Psychology of Color. Denver, Colorado, 2014. Web. 11 April 2014. Mark Pepper, Allen Brizee, Elizabeth Angeli. Visual Rhetoric: Analyzing Visual Documents. Purdue U, 2014. Web. 11 April 2014.